Rick Santorum Is the Post-Nasal Drip of Politics

Is there a bigger whiner on the political scene than Rick Santorum? It's incredible that he's still in the race, after so many others have fallen (Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain), because his every expression and utterance is branded with the L of "loser." Now some would say Newt Gingrich is the bigger whiner, but Newt's grumpy grandiosity plays too many octaves to be limited to the mere whiner category. Newt is a pompous ass of moon proportion whereas everything about Santorum is strictly small time; he's like the boss in Double Indemnity who preens at his desk and doesn't know a damn thing about the insurance business but is always in a state of exasperation that everybody's not snapping to, heeding his opinions.

Santorum is now griping at his own allies as the wear and tear of the campaign fray upon his already sulky disposition, complaining that Fox News has been "shilling" for Mitt Romney. As any Fox watcher can tell you, this is absurd. Fox News hasn't been anywhere near as lavish with its loofah soapings of the smiling replicant as it was with Herman Cain, Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, and, of course, candidate Sarah Palin (who's now a Fox News contributor, brightening up Greta van Susteren's jaw-clenched existence). Romney in fact was the least visible candidate on the Fox channel early in the campaign, but now that he's the clear frontrunner and the delegate arithmetic's on his side, Roger Ailes is hardly going to chop him as chum.

Santorum's complaint falls on the heels of his peevish suggestion that teleprompters be outlawed. I have neither the time nor patience to explain the bizarre fixation of rightwingers on the teleprompter and Obama--whom is sometimes jeered at as the Teleprompter in Chief or TOTUS--and their belief that, stripped of his teleprompter crutch, Obama would be reduced to muttering incoherencies and revealed to the world as (another rightwing formulation) "a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure." The point is that when you're in the home stretch of a primary campaign bitching about Fox News favoritism and teleprompters is not exactly the sign of a visionary leader and a big-picture guy.

The very petulance of Santorum's remarks is a sign that he isn't dropping out of the race anytime soon, not as long as he has grievances to saw and Super-PAC money to spend, and in this he mirrors Newt Gingrich, who will also have to be dragged off stage before kissing those cameras goodbye.